A 13-Year-Old Killer: The Murder of Derrick Robie

1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:07,040
In 1993, Savonor New York had fewer than a thousand people in it, and four-year-old Derek

2
00:00:07,040 --> 00:00:12,720
Roby probably knew a lot of them by name. On August 2nd, he walked one block to summer

3
00:00:12,720 --> 00:00:18,320
camp by himself for the first time ever, and he never arrived. The boy who stopped him

4
00:00:18,320 --> 00:00:46,120
on the way lived in the same town and was 13 years old. Savonor sits in Stubin County,

5
00:00:46,120 --> 00:00:50,600
in New York's southern tier, close enough to the Pennsylvania line that it barely qualifies

6
00:00:50,600 --> 00:00:56,360
as a trip. Fewer than a thousand people lived there in 1993. The grocery clerk knew your

7
00:00:56,360 --> 00:01:01,240
mother. Kids rode bikes until the street lights came on, and screen doors stayed unlocked

8
00:01:01,240 --> 00:01:07,280
because there was never really a reason to think about it. Derek Joseph Roby was four-years-old,

9
00:01:07,280 --> 00:01:11,800
and by the account of most people who lived there, maybe the most recognizable person in

10
00:01:11,800 --> 00:01:16,960
town. He would post up on a corner in Greek people as they walked past, and the town handed

11
00:01:16,960 --> 00:01:21,760
him a nickname without even holding a vote on it. They called him the unofficial mayor of

12
00:01:21,760 --> 00:01:27,360
Savonor. His dad, Dale, coached T-Ball, which was Derek's favorite thing in the world.

13
00:01:27,360 --> 00:01:32,000
He would step up to the plate and announce to his mother, "This one's for you, Mommy."

14
00:01:32,000 --> 00:01:37,760
Doreen Roby says that he usually delivered. That morning, Derek was headed to a recreation

15
00:01:37,760 --> 00:01:43,760
program at the park down the street. The park sat one block from there front door, and

16
00:01:43,760 --> 00:01:48,600
Doreen walked him there every single day. This particular morning, she had his baby-brother

17
00:01:48,600 --> 00:01:54,160
Dalton and her arms. Dalton was pretty fussy that day. Derek looked up at her and said,

18
00:01:54,160 --> 00:01:58,880
"It's okay, Mom. I'll go by myself." She gave him a kiss and told him that she loved

19
00:01:58,880 --> 00:02:05,080
him. He set it back and hopped off down the sidewalk. About a mile of childhood away,

20
00:02:05,080 --> 00:02:10,440
a 13-year-old named Eric Smith was riding his bike around that same park. Eric was born

21
00:02:10,440 --> 00:02:16,680
January 22, 1980. His biological father left right after he was born, came back long enough

22
00:02:16,680 --> 00:02:22,640
to father Eric's sister, and then he took off for good. His mother remarried. Eric later

23
00:02:22,640 --> 00:02:28,040
told a parole board that home involved emotional and physical abuse, and that he came out of

24
00:02:28,040 --> 00:02:33,800
it carrying a load of anger he had nowhere to put. School handed him more of the same.

25
00:02:33,800 --> 00:02:37,960
His mother documents spell out the specifics of what he got picked on for, which was his

26
00:02:37,960 --> 00:02:44,360
low-set ears, his thick glasses, his red hair, his freckles, and his height. He described

27
00:02:44,360 --> 00:02:50,040
himself years later as a kid who got tormented almost every single day. Then there's this

28
00:02:50,040 --> 00:02:54,720
part of the story that gets skipped over in shorter versions of it, and this is a shorter

29
00:02:54,720 --> 00:03:00,560
version, but I'm not going to skip it. Starting at around age 9, Eric had been hurting animals.

30
00:03:00,560 --> 00:03:06,680
He shot birds with a BB gun through rocks at frogs, and in 1989 he strangled a neighbor's

31
00:03:06,680 --> 00:03:13,440
cat to death. He was smoking cigarettes daily around that same age. But summer of 1993,

32
00:03:13,440 --> 00:03:18,120
a kid who had spent years on the receiving end of bullying had started doing it to smaller

33
00:03:18,120 --> 00:03:22,080
kids. On the morning of August 2, before he ever saw

34
00:03:22,080 --> 00:03:28,520
Derek, Eric had gone to that camp specifically to bother the younger campers, and the camp leader

35
00:03:28,520 --> 00:03:33,480
had kicked him out. He was riding away on his bike after getting kicked out when he spotted

36
00:03:33,480 --> 00:03:39,600
a four-year-old walking alone in the same direction. Eric talked Derek into taking a shortcut

37
00:03:39,600 --> 00:03:44,600
through the wooded strip near the park. What happened in there took just a few minutes.

38
00:03:44,600 --> 00:03:50,320
Eric strangled him until he lost consciousness, then dropped a rock on his head. Court records

39
00:03:50,320 --> 00:03:54,920
document that he sexually abused the body afterward. The medical examiner listed the

40
00:03:54,920 --> 00:04:00,800
cause of death as blunt trauma to the head with asphyxia as a contributing factor. Eric walked

41
00:04:00,800 --> 00:04:07,200
away, came back about five minutes later to confirm Eric was dead, then he left again.

42
00:04:07,200 --> 00:04:12,760
Around 11 that morning, Doreen left and went to pick Derek up. He had never arrived, and

43
00:04:12,760 --> 00:04:18,320
nobody at the program had seen him. The search pulled in the whole town and then some. Roughly

44
00:04:18,320 --> 00:04:23,120
four hours later, searchers found Derek's body in the woods, a short walk from the park

45
00:04:23,120 --> 00:04:29,000
where his father had taught him to swing a bat. Savona did what most small towns would do.

46
00:04:29,000 --> 00:04:34,160
Everyone assumed an outsider, a drifter on the highway, someone passing through who picked

47
00:04:34,160 --> 00:04:39,280
the wrong town and kept driving. The possibility that it came from inside the town stayed off the

48
00:04:39,280 --> 00:04:45,680
list because the town's whole understanding of itself depended on that being impossible.

49
00:04:45,680 --> 00:04:51,120
State police interviewed about 500 people over the next following days, and in a town of

50
00:04:51,120 --> 00:04:56,280
under a thousand, that means they talked to almost half of everybody there, and they fielded

51
00:04:56,280 --> 00:05:01,880
several unrelated complaints about parking. This is 1993, so the toolkit is knocking

52
00:05:01,880 --> 00:05:08,560
on doors, filling out paper forms and relying on people remembering things. Eric was interviewed

53
00:05:08,560 --> 00:05:14,000
more than once. He said that he had not seen Derek. Then his story shifted. He did

54
00:05:14,000 --> 00:05:19,040
videotaped walkthroughs that failed to line up with the physical evidence, small mismatches

55
00:05:19,040 --> 00:05:23,960
that kept nagging at investigators without adding up to anything usable. The case cracked

56
00:05:23,960 --> 00:05:29,440
open because of a family friend named Marlene Heskel. On the night of the murder, before

57
00:05:29,440 --> 00:05:34,520
anyone knew whether they were looking for an adult or a child, Eric asked her a question

58
00:05:34,520 --> 00:05:40,200
out of nowhere. He wanted to know what happened if it turned out to be a kid. She told him a kid

59
00:05:40,200 --> 00:05:46,520
would need psychiatric help. He said, "Oh, okay." And he walked off. She couldn't shake

60
00:05:46,520 --> 00:05:52,000
it. She also remembered Eric being near the scene that day. She went to Eric's mother and

61
00:05:52,000 --> 00:05:56,520
his mother brought him to the police command post. The investigator later said that Eric

62
00:05:56,520 --> 00:06:01,080
appeared to totally enjoy talking about the murder and did not want the conversation

63
00:06:01,080 --> 00:06:08,440
to end. On August 8th, six days after the murder, Eric confessed to his mother, his grandfather

64
00:06:08,440 --> 00:06:13,440
and his great-grandfather. The great-grandfather was a retired sheriff's deputy who tried to

65
00:06:13,440 --> 00:06:19,520
arrange something quiet with authorities. The district attorney had no interest in quiet.

66
00:06:19,520 --> 00:06:23,480
State police took a formal statement. Eric was read his rights in language written for

67
00:06:23,480 --> 00:06:29,320
children with family in the room, and then he talked for about three hours. Keep in mind,

68
00:06:29,320 --> 00:06:35,960
Eric is 13 years old. Eric Smith became the youngest person tried as an adult for murder

69
00:06:35,960 --> 00:06:41,560
in New York State history at that point. His defense argued intermittent explosive disorder,

70
00:06:41,560 --> 00:06:46,600
a rare condition, hoping for a manslaughter verdict that would route him into psychiatric

71
00:06:46,600 --> 00:06:51,360
treatment. The prosecution's expert countered that the diagnosis is almost never applied to

72
00:06:51,360 --> 00:06:56,640
someone that young. Doctors ran brain scans and hormone panels, looking for a biological

73
00:06:56,640 --> 00:07:03,920
explanation, and they came up with nothing. The diagnosis that stuck were ADHD and depression.

74
00:07:03,920 --> 00:07:11,480
The jury needed one day. On August 16th, 1994, they convicted him of second degree murder.

75
00:07:11,480 --> 00:07:17,480
On that November, he received nine years to life. The maximum New York had available for

76
00:07:17,480 --> 00:07:22,560
a juvenile murderer. His own attorney said publicly that Eric had a serious psychological

77
00:07:22,560 --> 00:07:28,120
issue that neither juvenile detention nor state prison was built to treat. Timing worked

78
00:07:28,120 --> 00:07:32,920
against him for reasons that had nothing to do with Savona. The mid-90s were the peak

79
00:07:32,920 --> 00:07:39,000
of the super predator panic. A Princeton academic published the term in 1995 and predicted tens

80
00:07:39,000 --> 00:07:44,160
of thousands of remorseless young killers roaming America by the year 2000. Juvenile

81
00:07:44,160 --> 00:07:49,120
Violet crime was already falling when he wrote it and it kept falling. And he eventually

82
00:07:49,120 --> 00:07:54,640
admitted that he got it all wrong. States passed the laws anyway. So Eric was set to be

83
00:07:54,640 --> 00:08:01,960
in prison for a long time. Eric became eligible for parole in 2002 and was denied ten straight

84
00:08:01,960 --> 00:08:07,080
times. Every two years, Dale and Dorine drove back into the worst days of their lives and

85
00:08:07,080 --> 00:08:12,040
asked the parole board of strangers to keep their sons killer locked up. Dale put words

86
00:08:12,040 --> 00:08:16,400
to something a lot of families carry, which is that he couldn't understand why the crime

87
00:08:16,400 --> 00:08:21,640
itself was not enough. They took it further and pushed for legislation to stretch the waiting

88
00:08:21,640 --> 00:08:27,880
period between hearings. Inside, Eric built a case for himself. He earned a college degree

89
00:08:27,880 --> 00:08:33,200
in Crusade Evangelism, talked about becoming a counselor for bullied kids, and described

90
00:08:33,200 --> 00:08:40,580
years of therapy. At his 11th hearing in October 2021, he mentioned a fiance, a woman studying

91
00:08:40,580 --> 00:08:46,120
law who had started riding with him with questions about juvenile justice. He told the board that

92
00:08:46,120 --> 00:08:51,720
13-year-old who took Derek's life was not the man sitting in front of them. They granted

93
00:08:51,720 --> 00:08:52,920
it.

94
00:08:52,920 --> 00:08:57,760
Savona held a peaceful protest that November. His release got pushed back months because

95
00:08:57,760 --> 00:09:02,960
he had no approved address, and he was denied permission to return to his mother's house.

96
00:09:02,960 --> 00:09:08,960
On February 1, 2022, Eric Smith walked out of Woodburn Correctional Facility at 42 years

97
00:09:08,960 --> 00:09:14,320
old and went to living Queens roughly 28 years after his arrest.

98
00:09:14,320 --> 00:09:19,440
Dorine Roby has said that she deliberately does not track where he is or what he does because

99
00:09:19,440 --> 00:09:24,840
she refuses to give him the space in her head. Derek would be 37 now.

100
00:09:24,840 --> 00:09:40,760
Thanks for listening to 10 Minute Murder, bingeable true crime stories.

101
00:09:40,760 --> 00:09:47,000
Hello, I'm Joe, I'm the host, here's an email, subject, my mother-in-law, and the paranormal.

102
00:09:47,000 --> 00:09:52,360
Joe, I need to preface this by saying I am a rational person, I have an engineering degree,

103
00:09:52,360 --> 00:09:58,760
I do not believe in ghosts. That said, that's a wild way to start an email by the way.

104
00:09:58,760 --> 00:10:03,400
That said, my mother-in-law passed in February, and about three weeks later the smoke detector

105
00:10:03,400 --> 00:10:09,040
in the guest room she used to stay in started chirping. I changed the battery, it kept chirping,

106
00:10:09,040 --> 00:10:14,000
I replaced the whole unit, still chirping. The electrician came out, found nothing wrong,

107
00:10:14,000 --> 00:10:19,600
and charged me $180 to tell me that. My wife thinks it's her mom, I think it's bad

108
00:10:19,600 --> 00:10:25,120
wiring, we have agreed to disagree, you cover a lot of dark material and I imagine you hear

109
00:10:25,120 --> 00:10:29,840
from people who think they've experienced something. Where do you personally land on it?

110
00:10:29,840 --> 00:10:33,360
I'm asking because you seem like someone who would give me a real answer instead of just

111
00:10:33,360 --> 00:10:40,320
going along with whatever I want to hear. Doug, in Wichita, Kansas. Doug, what a weird email.

112
00:10:40,320 --> 00:10:48,320
First, I'm sorry about your mother-in-law, that can't be easy, but also, I'm a little bit on your

113
00:10:48,320 --> 00:10:55,920
side here. Do I believe in ghosts? I think I do, but I don't believe in them in the traditional sense of

114
00:10:55,920 --> 00:11:00,640
some people when they die, their spirits kind of linger or whatever. I think personally this is

115
00:11:00,640 --> 00:11:05,600
going to sound really weird and if you've never listened to my podcast, "10 Minute Mystery" before,

116
00:11:05,600 --> 00:11:09,360
you can think why is he talking about this? I like strange things, I like the paranormal stuff.

117
00:11:09,360 --> 00:11:16,720
I don't think ghosts in the sense that we think of ghosts are family and friends that have passed

118
00:11:16,720 --> 00:11:21,520
and they are lingering. I think that they are demons. I don't think ghosts are a good thing,

119
00:11:21,520 --> 00:11:28,480
so I don't think that that's your mother-in-law chirping in the smoke detector. If it is something paranormal,

120
00:11:28,480 --> 00:11:33,280
I think it's something else. And I'll leave it there because I don't want to weird everyone out.

121
00:11:33,280 --> 00:11:40,000
Okay, do me one huge favor if you're listening to me right now. Check to make sure you are subscribed

122
00:11:40,000 --> 00:11:45,200
to "10 Minute Murder". It's a huge help to me, it's a huge help to you, it's going to more easily

123
00:11:45,200 --> 00:11:49,200
help you find the show every time you want to come check in and see what's happening on "10 Minute

124
00:11:49,200 --> 00:11:55,600
Murder". You can also go to 10minutemerder.com, you'll find "Listen Links", you'll find a blog there,

125
00:11:55,600 --> 00:12:01,120
email, also links to where you can follow the show on social media and keep in touch with me that way.

126
00:12:01,120 --> 00:12:05,280
If you're an OG listener, you've been listening a long time, I love you with my whole heart. You know

127
00:12:05,280 --> 00:12:09,200
that. Please keep doing what you're doing, sharing the podcast with your friends and your family

128
00:12:09,200 --> 00:12:14,240
and rating it five stars wherever that's possible. And that's going to do it. That's your episode for

129
00:12:14,240 --> 00:12:19,040
today. Thank you again for listening to "10 Minute Murder". See you next time.